Rubbish tides over the last weekend - 7.30 and 8 quite possibly the worst time for a tide, and they were neaps as well, so not much water.. on Saturday (storm) Hannah was tossing her hair about and having a right teenage strop, so Sunday afternoon late (half four/five was the first I could get aboard) saw me back on the boat to finish the last bits and pieces...
Noticeably cooler than last weekend, but significantly calmer than the day before, the first job was to get the genoa/jib up - I was interested to see how this was going to look as I had it re-cut over the winter at my local sail maker (Batt Sails) - lots more detail here [clicky]... long time readers will know I gave the sail three seasons before finally accepting that it really was too big.. it's a fine sail, but 90% of the time I sailed with at least three rolls in purely because the clew was too far back/deep and made short tacking onerous, not to say a pain in the nethers when it caught on the stays.. not only that it was dramatically changing the sail area as three rolls in would remove almost all of the top half of the sail.. anyway job done I was interested to see what the changes were...
Sail went up in a trice, in itself a good thing and indicative that it is smaller in area as previously it would be all over the place while raising it.. luff is perhaps 2 or 3" shorter - which is no bad thing - and at first sight it looks eminently more manageable.. the cut line is hardly noticeable as it runs the length of the bolt wire.. looking forward to trying it now...
Having done that and rigged the furling rope it was time to tighten up the stays, and that was done as well, but not before losing a screwdriver over the side... Neptune must have a damn good tool kit by now!
Next/last, on to something that had been niggling, the other genoa fairlead.. the first one had gone in an absolute treat but the niggle was that the other had not and it was offending my inner obsessive compulsive... these cars go for forty to fifty pounds minimum each, and although it looks like a standard 1" track there's no guarantee a new one would fit, so the decision was taken to modify the current one.. First job, get the old one off.. can't get the car off the track without removing one of the stopper bolts at the end of the track so got my biggest screwdriver, with a spanner to help with torque, and went at it... and sheared the (bronze? copper?) bolt... gah (first job for next winter.. there's half a dozen more bolts holding the track so I'm not concerned until then)... either way the car was freed, so I bought it home for some remedial action in the garage..
Before shot.. original car from when the boat was built I'm guessing.. fitted with a tufnol (?) lined bulls-eye fairlead on a 360' swivel..
...took a powered hacksaw to the join and it came off in one, smoothed it off, marked the drill holes for the bolts for the new fairlead (that I had had sitting in my spares box months, if not years, for just this event), drilled them, lightly counter sunk the reverse of the hole so the bolt head would sit flat with the inner surface, and then through bolted.. to keep it neat I then trimmed off the bolts to sit flat with the nut.. job done.. pleased with that, and my obsessive compulsive can now start niggling about the missing end bolt..
After shot..
Now... can we go sailing please?!
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